


The Weight of Every Responsibility

by Wagontrain



Series: Messiah in Absentia [3]
Category: Fallout 3
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-30
Updated: 2012-06-30
Packaged: 2017-11-09 00:16:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wagontrain/pseuds/Wagontrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vault 101, Megaton, Project Purity, the Citadel, the Pitt, an orphaned baby...the Wasteland is in constant need of help, and that never changes.  How much weight can one woman bear?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Weight of Every Responsibility

They had been walking east for three days before Marie became completely inconsolable. 

Soledad gave up traveling any further and picked out a house off of the highway to make camp in. She checked each room, teeth gritted against the baby’s incessant howling, before satisfying herself that the decrepit house was empty of raiders, wildmen or any other monsters.

The master bedroom on the second floor looked like the best place to hole up, and Soledad laid Marie carefully on the bed. The baby squirmed, her little arms and legs straining against her swaddling as she screeched her displeasure. Soledad shrugged off her backpack and dumped its contents out on the bed. “Here’s your teddy bear!” she exclaimed with feigned enthusiasm, dancing the torn, eyeless stuffed animal over Marie. “You love your teddy bear.” The screaming continued uninterrupted, and Soledad dropped the bear in frustration. No toy would distract the baby from her hunger. Soledad had run out of the baby food she’d stolen from Midea yesterday and somehow she didn’t think Marie would be satisfied with Cram.

Soledad had earned many titles over the last year; Lone Wanderer, Wasteland Savior. But _mother_ had never been one of them. There hadn’t been any babies in Vault 101, and of all the conversations she’d had with her father, caring for an infant hadn’t been among them. The only ideas she had for taking care of a baby were gleaned from half-remembered comments by old lady Palmer and her late-night conversations with Amata where they talked out the idea of one day having children themselves.

Soledad picked Marie up and cuddled the baby to her chest, cooing wordlessly and pacing back and forth across the room. The infant’s screams pierced her ears and drove straight into her brain, and for a desperate moment Soledad considered stripping off her shirt and trying to feed the squalling thing _herself_ if it would just _make the screaming stop_.

She headed back downstairs and the motion seemed to sooth Marie. Soledad walked up and down the lone flight of stairs again and again until the baby calmed down, or just passed out. They needed help, Soledad realized, because as things stood now Marie wouldn’t survive the trek back to the Capital Wasteland. “It’s better than Wernher had planned for you,” she whispered to the sleeping infant. “I’ll save you, I promise. I’m the Wasteland savior.”

Quietly as she could, Soledad kicked the debris scattered about the first floor into low piles in front of the doors. That completed, she returned upstairs and laid the baby down again. The simple fact was that she’d failed in the Pitt, she reflected as she packed the spilled gear back into her rucksack. She’d seen the glint of ambition in Wernher’s eye when she told him Ashur was dead. In that moment Soledad realized that she had overthrown one tyrant for another, and left Marie parentless at his mercy.

Whatever pillows the bed once had were long gone, so Soledad shifted her rucksack to the head of the bed and settled against it. She had to get back to the Capital Wasteland. Even with the Enclave gone, Elder Lyons and the Brotherhood would need help consolidating, Project Purity would surely need someone to help administer it and maybe things had calmed down enough on the homefront that Amata would let her come home.

Wernher’s plea for help had been impossible for Soledad to resist; the plight of the Pitt slaves too keen to just ignore. And for all she’d done, the only person she had a prayer of actually helping from that hellhole was a tiny, starving infant. 

Sleep crept up on her, and Soledad embraced it.

*

She was in Tenpenny Tower again, standing with Tenpenny and Mr. Burke on the balcony. She could see for miles, and looking down was surprised to find herself dressed in her blue and yellow Vault-Tec jumpsuit.

The clatter of gunfire sounded from inside the tower, and Soledad startled. Animal roars and the screams of dying security guards echoed up the stairwells, accompanied by the cries of the civilians. “What’s happening?” Soledad gasped, casting about for a gun, a tire iron, anything.

“You convinced me to let the ghouls into my Tower,” Tenpenny said, sounding dejected as he held his teacup out to Mr. Burke, who faithfully refilled it.

“Very noble of you, yes,” he said, glaring at Soledad behind his sunglasses.

“It sounds like they’re done killing everyone on the first floor,” Tenpenny sighed. The sound of pounding feet on the stairs began, and grew steadily louder.

“No,” Soledad breathed. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was just trying to help the ghouls!”

Tenpenny gazed out over the Wasteland. “Lovely day, wouldn’t you say Mr. Burke?”

“Quite so, Mr. Tenpenny.”

The doors behind them erupted outward and a mob of ghouls rushed the two men. In moments the ghouls had shoved both of them against the railing but stopped there, staring back the way they’d come.

Wernher stepped outside, his smug grin failing to hide his puzzlement. “What did you think was going to happen?” He waved his hand dismissively, and at the command the ghouls manhandled Tenpenny and Burke over the edge, their screams faint under Soledad’s. She lunged at the railing, too slow by far to catch either. She watched them fall and after a moment hit the plaza below, incongruously with a sound more like metal and stone scattering than bodies rupturing. Soledad leaned over the railing, panting, and realized that the noise hadn’t stopped.

With a gasp Soledad sat upright in bed, scrambling for the machine pistol on her thigh. Now that she was awake voices were discernable as two -no, three- people moved through the clutter she’d left by the door. The commotion of Soledad rolling off the bed woke Marie, who immediately began howling.

“You hear that?” a male voice sounded from below. “There’s a kid up there!”

Another man snarled: “Good, I’m fucking starving-” He broke off with a yelp and another voice -this one a woman- growled.

“We don’t eat people, Sam. We’re not from the ‘Burgh. Don’t even goddamn joke about that.”

Soledad could hear them mounting the stairs, and fired around into the stairwell. “Stay where you are!” she shouted. A burst of profanity erupted below, and the first voice spoke up again.

“We don’t want to fight! We’re…we’re refugees!”

Positioning herself between Marie and the bedroom door, Soledad shouted, “I want all of you upstairs! Slowly, one at a time!” To the baby she whispered as calmly as she could “It’ll be all right. I’ll keep you safe.”

The first man stepped into the room. He looked the part of a refugee; haggard, ragged and splattered with mud and less identifiable stains. “I’m Glen,” he offered, keeping his hands over his head. The other man stepped into view -Sam, she assumed- and finally the woman. Soledad looked them over. None carried bags or rucksacks, and between them they had carried nothing more threatening than a belt. She couldn’t imagine any of them lasting more than a few days in the Capital Wasteland.

“Are you one of the Lieutenant Governor’s state troopers?” Sam demanded, his eyes not leaving her machine pistol.

“I have no idea what a ‘Lieutenant Governor’ is. I’m just passing through.”

“Not through New Stanton you’re not,” Glen replied. “You’re coming from the west? From the ‘Burgh?” Soledad nodded. “The Lieutenant Governor was sent here by the Keystone. They rule over Harrisburg, and their territory’s been spreading. New Stanton is just their most recent conquest.

Marie continued screaming unabated, and Soledad blew out a breath, lowering her gun. The refugees breathed easier. “I can help you. But first, do any of you have anything the…that my baby can eat?”

“Alice, didn’t you have some mutfruit?” The woman nodded, producing a vivid purple fruit. Soledad accepted it gratefully, rummaging through her bag in search of a knife. She pulled out a few bottles of Aqua Pura, the Mothership Zeta transponder and three sensor modules before finding her trench knife. She cut and mashed the fruit quickly, feeding it to Marie with her finger. The baby quieted immediately, eating all Soledad gave her and looking satisfied for the first time since they left the Pitt.

“Thank you,” Soledad said simply.

“You got enough junk?” Sam demanded, picking up the Zeta transponder quizzically. 

“You never know what’ll be useful,” Soledad shot back, snatching the transponder from him.

Glen was looking at her equipment too, but he was focused on her weapons. “You’ve got…how do you carry so many guns?” Soledad followed his eyes: her assault rifle and sniper rifle laid out on the floor next to the bed, the magnum revolver sat snugly in its holster under her left arm and the machine pistol still in her hand. And they hadn’t even seen her collection of grenades.

“I have a strong back,” she said with a shrug, holstering the machine pistol. “Now what’s the situation with this…Governor? Does he have soldiers? Can you sketch me a map of New Stanton?”

Soledad cuddled Marie to her chest, rocking the baby gently. “I have to help. I’m the Wasteland Savior.” Alice raised a disbelieving eyebrow at Soledad’s intensity, but plucked up a marker from the rucksack and began drawing on the wall. “The Imperator showed up a few days ago with maybe a dozen fighters. They didn’t look like raiders or wildmen; they were wearing real armor, and all of them had this symbol on their arms.” She sketched a rough square, pinched in sharply at the top.

“A keystone,” Soledad said, shifting Marie to her hip absently. “Makes sense. Pennsylvania was the Keystone Commonwealth.”

“The what?” asked Sam. “How would you know that?”

“We learned all the commonwealth nicknames in school.” Marie gurgled happily, and Soledad realized she was grinning at the baby. “So the Lieutenant Governor showed up with his soldiers, then what?”

Glen sighed and leaned back against the doorjam. “He invited everyone to join the Keystone and gave us a day to think about it. We refused; we didn’t beat off Ashur’s raiders just to roll over for someone else.”

Alice didn’t turn away from her work on the map. “Then they started killing people.”

“We just barely got out,” Glen concluded. “We thought we could make it to the ‘Burgh, see if we could talk Pyotr or Leslie into sending help. But if you can help…”

Soledad paced to Alice’s map, bouncing Marie gently. Miracle of miracles, she seemed to have dozed off. “You said they only have a dozen soldiers?”

“Thirteen if you count the Governor.”

“New Stanton looks like an awfully big place to secure with that few people. No robots?” The refugees shook their heads. “And they’re probably acting in shifts, so that’s…a third? Half of them out patrolling at a time?” She pinched the bridge of her nose. She _had_ to get back to the Capital Wasteland, she _had_ to help the Brotherhood clear out the last of the Enclave and administer Project Purity, she _had_ to find a way to convince Amata to let her come home, she _had_ to protect this child she’d orphaned.

She _had_ to help the people of New Stanton.

“This is horrible,” she whispered, the weight of her responsibilities heavy across her shoulders, and against her hip.

“What’s that?”

“I’ll need two of you to come with me, and someone to stay with Marie.” She shot Sam a look. “You’re definitely coming with me.”

“I wasn’t really going to eat it,” he groused.

“Yeah, you were.” Alice replied. “I’ll go with. I know how to shoot better than Glen.”

“Give me a minute.” Soledad sat on the corner of the bed, cradling Marie in her arms. “I’m going to go away for a while, but I’ll be back. I promise.” She stood and carefully passed Marie to Glen. “I’ll be back for her.”

*

It was night by the time Alice and Sam led Soledad to New Stanton. The buildings were in far better shape than Soledad had seen in the Capital Wasteland or the Pitt, and if not for the layer of soot covering everything -blown in from the mills in the Pitt, Alice explained- the town would have seemed idyllic. There were no craters, Soledad realized. No blasted-out houses, no two hundred year old scorch marks left on the ground. New Stanton had been spared the Great War, as much as anywhere was.

“We need to know what they’re up to,” Soledad said. “Four to one odds aren’t bad, but only if we’re smart about it.”

“Do you hear that?” Sam asked, cocking his head to the side. “It’s like a voice, but…booming.” His fingers clenched the grip of Soledad’s assault rifle. “I can’t make it out.”

“A loudspeaker,” Soledad said.

Alice nodded. “Let’s get closer.” Soledad frowned, but followed them deeper into the town.

“…are at the new frontier of the Keystone Commonwealth,” the voice rang out. “The Keystone is each of us. It’s each of you. Through your contributions, we will make the Keystone Commonwealth strong. All ready Philadelphia has joined us; soon Pittsburgh will as well.”

They couldn’t help but hear the voice now, and Alice crept to the side of one of the low houses and peered around the corner. She froze at what she saw, and crawled back. “It’s everyone from town. They’re sitting in chairs, watching a moving picture of a guy’s face projected on one of the buildings.”

“Let me see,” Soledad took her place. It was as Alice had described, except that the townsfolk were chained to the chairs and surrounded by Keystone soldiers, all bearing rifles. The speech continued and for a moment the high-minded talk of contribution and loyalty reminded Soledad of President Eden’s speeches. “It’s indoctrination. They’re trying to force your people to think like them.”

“What? Fuck that,” Sam snapped, stepping around the corner and raising his rifle.

Soledad gaped. “What are you doing? _No_!”

The rifle roared and one of the soldiers fell to the ground. Sam twisted to line up a shot on another, but Soledad could see the first already struggling to his feet. She shouldered her sniper rifle and put a bullet in his head.

“Dammit Sam, you’re hitting more of our people than them!” Alice screamed, the machine pistol stuttering in her hand.

“Get back!” Soledad yelled. “ _Get back_!”

The Keystoners were quick to respond, and Soledad threw herself down as they sent a hail of gunfire back at them. They were _good_ , she thought desperately. Talon Company good. Alice shrieked once, horribly, crashing to the ground and clutching at her throat as blood flowed around her fingers. Sam fired on blindly until a bullet caught him in the arm. 

A blast of plasma exploded near the Keystoners, and Soledad tossed away the grenade pin. “Get up Sam! We’re leaving!” She scrambled to Alice; the bullet had torn into her throat, but not deeply. Soledad got an arm around the other woman and half-carried, half-dragged her back the way they’d come.

“Fuck you, my friends are back there!”

Soledad hesitated, torn between helping Sam and making a break for it, but Alice’s wheezing breathing decided for her. She fled.

*

“What the fuck are we going to do?”

Glen paced back and forth across the bedroom as Soledad washed Alice’s blood from her hands in a bowl of Aqua Pura. She eyed the three bottles she had left and tried not to worry.

“The bullet grazed her windpipe, but missed the arteries on both sides,” Soledad said quietly, drying her hands. “It’ll scar, but she’ll live. Assuming she survives whatever infection she picks up.”

“Okay. Thank you for that.” Glen exploded. “But what the hell are we going to _do_?!”

Soledad sat heavily on the bed next to Alice, clutching Marie to herself. “I don’t know.”

“I mean, they’re brainwashing people, Sam’s _dead_ , they’re going to think to look here sooner or later…”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. She heard Glen, and felt the pressure of her promises to Elder Lyons, to Amata, to her father, to the reputation Three Dog had built around her, and suddenly everything was just so _big_.

Too big.

“The Keystone aren’t going to stop,” she whispered.

“What do you mean?”

“They aren’t going to stop. They’ll keep spreading and committing horrors until they come across something even worse than they are.” Still holding Marie she rifled through her rucksack. “That’s what war _is_ , and it never changes, and I…I…I can’t take it anymore.”

“Are you kidding me?” Glen demand. “You called yourself a fucking savior! You’re supposed to save us!”

“I know,” Soledad said, producing the Zeta transponder. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She thumbed the device on, and immediately an electric tingle filled the room. Blinding golden light enveloped her, and a moment later Soledad and Marie were gone.

*

The light faded and Soledad found herself standing in a cramped, round room; one of the Zeta teleporters. She felt the expected wave of nausea sweep over her, and Marie immediately began wailing.

She heard a clatter of fast-running feet, and Sally burst into view. “It’s her, it’s her!” The young girl straightened and pushed the edge of her hand to her forehead. “Captain on deck! Elliot taught me that!” she beamed, then gaped at Marie. “Soledad, did you have a baby?”

More footsteps preceded Elliot. His medic’s uniform was looking a bit worse for wear, but his smile was fresh. “Welcome back. I was starting to wonder when you were going to come visit.”

“I’m not visiting,” Soledad replied, offering Marie a finger to suck on. Contented, she quieted down. To Sally: “Sweetie? Are there any sleeping rooms big enough for the baby and me?”

“Oh yeah! The ones we’ve been staying in are way big! I’ll open one for you!” She scampered off.

Soledad watched her go. “How’s she been?”

“As well as you’d expect from a two-hundred-year-old nine-year-old,” Elliot answered. He ushered Soledad off of the teleportation matrix and out onto the bridge itself. “We found a device that can translate for Kago, which is good because we’ve been waking people up from cryosleep and…there’s a lot of us now. And I’m developing a taste for purple squid.” He followed Soledad as she crossed to the command console and noticed as she hesitated at the sight of the void in the massive bay windows ahead. “Still scared of space?”

“I grew up underground, Elliot,” Soledad replied. “It took me days to get used to the idea of _sky_ , let alone…” she gestured out, “…endless nothing.” Taking a deep breath she descended the stairs to stand before the windows, turning Marie in her arms to look out at the devastated planet below them. The planet that needed its savior. That needed her.

What would Amata think? To abandon the people who needed her, even if they asked more than she could give? What would dad think? Soledad looked down at Marie, staring out at the world below, and hugged her close. The Wasteland was a huge place with more troubles than any one person could hope to solve, but one life…she could make this one life better. The Wasteland would find someone new, a savior who would be heroic and strong and solve all their problems.

Soledad only wished she could believe that. It might make the overwhelming feeling of capitulation a little easier to bear.


End file.
